Filipino orthography

Filipino orthography (Ortograpiyang Filipino) specifies the correct use of the writing system of the Filipino language, the national and co-official language of the Philippines. In 2013, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino released the Ortograpiyang Pambansa (“National Orthography”), a new set of guidelines for writing the Filipino language. The modern Filipino alphabet introduced since 1987 consists of 28 letters. C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X, and Z are used mostly for loanwords, regional words and proper nouns. The vowels are A, E, I, O, and U. Usual diacritic marks are acute ( ́ ), grave ( ), circumflex ( ˆ ), diaeresis ( ̈ ) which are optional, and only used with the vowels. Grave ( ) and circumflex ( ˆ ) may only appear at the end of a word ending in a vowel. Diacritics have no impact on collation or alphabetical order. Possible combinations include: á, à, â, é, è, ê, ë, í, ì, î, ó, ò, ô, ú, ù, û. Historically, the tilde was used with (g̃) in many Philippine languages. It was notably used to shorten the words nang (ergative case marker) and man͠gá (pluralization particle) into ng̃ and mg̃á respectively. Today, these two words are usually just simply written as ng and mga. Ñ is considered as a separate letter, instead of a letter-diacritical mark combination. The alphabet also uses the Ng digraph, even originally with a large tilde that spanned both n and g (as in n͠g) when a vowel follows the digraph. This tilde indicates that the "n͠g" and the vowel should be pronounced as one syllable, such as "n͠ga" in the three-syllable word "pan͠galan" ("name") – syllabicated as [pa-n͠ga-lan], not [pan-ga-lan]. The use of the tilde over the two letters is now rare. Due to technical constraints, machine-printed variants of "n͠ga" emerged, which included "ñga", "ng̃a", and even "gña" (as in the case of Sagñay, Camarines Sur). The Ng digraph letter is similar to, but not the same as, the prepositional word ng ("of"/"of the"), originally spelled ng̃ (with a tilde over the g only). The words ng and ng̃ are shortened forms of the word nang.